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How Robert Burns wrote new poetry 60 years after his death — with a little help from Victorian ‘table-rapping’ séances

Death was no barrier to writing poetry for a man of Robert Burns’s skills.

At least, that’s what a group of spiritualists known as the Yorkshire Table Rappers believed.

In the Victorian era spiritualism – the belief that that the dead could make with the living – was increasingly popular.

‘Table-rapping’ was the knocking sound supposedly made by the dead as they communicated during séances.

Robert Burns first started talking to the Keighley spirit circle around 1855 — nearly 60 years after his death.

As historian Dan Gray recounts on The Death and Resurrection of Robert Burns, “Burns would spell out messages to them letter by letter”.

They included:

Take heed of what I say
And poetry I will give
To cheer your mind from day to day
And tell you how to live

As his visits to the group continued Burns began to dictate poetry in ‘Scotch’, although not in any recognisable dialect of Scotland.

And while this led some Scots spiritualists to doubt the Keighley group’s claims, according to Dan they were able to turn the confusion to their advantage.

“It demonstrated that it must be Burns [ing them] because none of them knew Scots and yet they were able to write in this language.”

Poetry Extra

Poet Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC’s radio poetry archive with The Elephant in the Poetry Reading with Liz Lochhead on the influence of Robert Burns.
Scottish movie stars recite Robert Burns

Six giants of Scottish acting are on hand help you perfect your delivery of Burns’s poetry.
Robert Burns’s iPod

David Owen Norris and guests listen to Robert Burns’s favourite songs in his drinking club in Tarbolton, near Glasgow.
A Birl for Burns

Neil Oliver spoke with Seamus Heaney at his home in Dublin for a BBC Northern Ireland television documentary, An Ode to Burns and Ulster.

The Death and Resurrection of Robert Burns

Keara Murphy explores the strange afterlife of Robert Burns which was more eventful than you might think.

The works of Robert Burns

A collection of the bard’s work read by stars of stage and screen .

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